


The Lives in Which I've Loved You

by Thelonelycoast



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:39:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thelonelycoast/pseuds/Thelonelycoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In all his lives, Louis has only three wishes: one, that Harry will love him back, two, that they will get to grow old together, and three, that they die at the same time so they never have to know a minute without each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [25 Lives](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/13960) by tongari. 



> This work was inspired by this wonderful piece of art [here](http://s2b2.livejournal.com/142934.html) It's still in progress, but the finished fic will follow twenty-five lives.

****

  
**The Lives in Which I’ve Loved You**   


  
  
_**I. The first time I remember you, you are blonde, and you don’t love me back.**_  
  
Louis has always known he was different; he knows no one else feels the weight of their past lives, stacked up inside them like nested Mastroyshka dolls. He knows no one else remembers the way he does, for him memory is not something relegated to old photographs and nostalgia-clouded remembrances of one’s youth, but something that’s continually happening, spooling and unspooling itself like a skein of endless yarn.  
  
In all his lives, Louis has only three wishes: one, that Harry will love him back, two, that they will get to grow old together, and three, that they die at the same time so they never have to know a minute without each other.

* * *

In this life, Harry’s a French prince and Louis is a courtesan in his royal harem. As fate would have it, Harry always chooses one of the heavily perfumed, powdered women that Louis spends his time with, but never Louis himself. They return to the chambers at night, reeking of Harry, white throats bruised, thick ringlets and strands of pearls unraveling from complicated hairstyles. But Louis _remembers_ , remembers the crush of Harry’s body against his; remembers inhaling the fragrant tangle of his curls, always the same scent across the lifetimes, remembers his lips, insistent and hungry. Some days it’s enough to carry him through. Other days…  
  
Louis kisses Harry only once, when Harry’s fourteen and they’re both a little gone from drink during a masked costume ball. Harry doesn’t push him away, but it’s clear in the blushing, fumbling aftermath that Louis is not his thing. Still there’s a sadness in Harry’s eyes as he puts a restraining hand on Louis’ heaving chest, like he’s sorry for not wanting it. Harry slides his mask back into place with an apologetic shrug and steps back into the throng of sweating, heaving bodies, leaving Louis shaking and alone.  
  
For a while, when they run into each other in the drafty, echoing halls of the castle, they sidestep around one another with shifting, downcast eyes, reluctant participants in a complicated waltz. But time, as it’s apt to do, moves on and the awkwardness passes, replaced by a sort of wary acceptance – that Louis won’t try it again and that Harry won’t ever love Louis like that (at least not in _this_ lifetime).  
  
Still, Louis is a part of Harry’s life, whether Harry likes it or not. Louis is there to draw Harry a warm bath on the lonely nights when even sex with a busty courtesan cannot set the troubled young prince right. Louis is there with a perfectly timed joke when Harry’s eyes start to glaze over at boring royal functions. Louis is there, holding a distraught sobbing Harry when Harry gets betrothed to a Corsican princess he doesn’t love and whom he’ll never actually get to marry. And he’s there when Harry dies, young in this life, clutching fur pelts to his pale, clammy skin and coughing red wetness into a silk handkerchief that Louis presses to his lips, faintly, tenderly, like a kiss.  
  
Harry doesn’t love him in this life, but Louis remembers. _You loved me once_ , Louis tells Harry on his death-bed, where he’s kept a quiet vigil for three horrible, wonderful weeks, delicately mopping the sweat from Harry’s brow and lifting chalices of water and mulled wine to his parched lips. _And you’ll love me again._  
  
Harry dies in his arms, never having spoke a reply.  
  
 ** _II. The next time you are a brunette and you do._**  
  
Louis is a dog in this life. A Shiba Inu named Hachi, who wears a knotted red scarf around his furred throat. Harry is a thin, tall, sweet-smelling Japanese girl named Miki, whose dark hair spills over Louis like the sleeve of a silk komono when she bends down to hug him. Miki’s a shy ten year old when her parents bring Hachi home one bright Spring day. Hachi’s a bumbling, fat-bellied puppy, nails skittering and slipping on the floor as he tears around the house, nipping at her drooping school socks as she tips her head back and laughs the husky little laugh he’s come to love.  
  
They share ice-cream cones in the good weather and an umbrella in the bad. When he’s small enough, he rides in the basket of her bike and when he’s larger, he trots alongside her. Sometimes he chews on her best shoes because that’s something he likes in this life, even though it makes Miki disappointed in him.  
  
Things aren’t physical between them in this life, but they are as they should be. Miki is his and he is Miki’s. When Miki glances up from whatever school-work she’s doing to see him standing by his bowl, awaiting dinner, she smiles the same smile she’s always smiled and he wags his tail furiously because in this life, that’s how he smiles at her.  
  
Miki tells Hachi her secrets in the dark after everyone else has gone to bed and he falls asleep to the soft, low cadence of her voice, which is just as he remembered it. Hachi sleeps at the foot of Miki’s Tatami mat each night and follows her to school each day and waits in the cool, packed dirt outside the house each afternoon for her return. Sometimes he chases birds or squirrels or gnaws on his stuffed fox, which he loves so much and so dearly that the stuffing is coming out and the fox is missing an ear. But mostly, he waits. The days feel both long and short in his dog mind, the time when Miki is gone from him seem short eternities unto themselves.  
  
He measures time in seasons now – the dusty, intoxicating scent of the long grass he rolls in come summer, the satisfying crunch of leaves under his paws in the autumn, the cold bite of snow on his nose in the winter, the whispering showers from the cherry blossom trees in the spring. He measures days by the lengthening shadows on the walls, by a cricket’s progress across the bamboo floorboards. He watches Miki grow taller and farther away from him, sits by the door wining into his paws as she spends more and more time away from home with her friends and finally, her boyfriend.  
  
Hachi loves Miki and he’s happy that she’s happy, but things are less fun when it’s just him and he misses their long bike rides and the way she used to look at him as if he were the most important thing in her life. There are other important things now.  
  
One day, Miki gets married and then pregnant, barely able to bend down to pet him over her swollen belly. Hachi stays by her through her pregnancy, worried and over-attentive. She sneaks him teriyaki chicken on her chopsticks, despite her husband’s silent disapproval and he nuzzles his face under her legs. In the New Year, Miki gives birth to a fat, happy baby with a head of fluffy black hair, who digs his rice-sticky hands into Hachi’s fur and places wet, slobbering kisses into his back. Hachi suffers the baby’s affections because the baby is Miki’s and so by extension, his.  
  
The baby’s crawling when, in his tenth year, Hachi’s hips start to bother him. He can’t go on walks the way he used to and he spends more and more time taking long, lazy naps in the patch of sunlight and dust that falls across Miki’s bedroom floor in the afternoons. He stops eating as much. He barely moves as Miki’s chubby boy flops down on top of him, smelling of milk and mashed bananas and Miki.  
  
He dreams he’s running through endless summertime fields, he dreams he’s chasing rabbits, he dreams Miki is young again, her tall knee-socks sliding down, her deep, boyish laugh like the ocean tumbling a stone smooth.  
  
At the end, Miki holds Hachi's tired head in her lap, fat, silent tears falling into his fur as he takes his last shuddering breath and leaves the world once more.  
  
 ** _III. After a while I give up trying to guess if the colour of your hair means anything…_**  
  
If Louis’ soul were punctuation, it would be a comma, not a period – a little pause, the breath between speaking. He remembers everything from his lives, but he doesn’t remember being dead. It’s like he’s only closed his eyes for a moment and woken up to a new world.

* * *

In this life, Louis is a lonely, serious-minded German boy with a glossy head of straight blond hair. He wears round, silver-trimmed spectacles when he reads and he reads all the time (far too much in his parent’s opinion). He’s the only son of two hardy, no-nonsense farmers, who think him a bit too soft, a bit too dreamy, one foot on the ground and one in another place. They don’t understand yet that the other place is with Harry.  
  
The only thing that gets Louis through the long days’ labors, through the multitude of nameless drudgeries, through the watery stew each morning and the watery stew each night is the thought that Harry is out there somewhere – drinking or laughing or dreaming or being born and finding his way back to Louis. Louis spends his evenings with his head buried in books and finds no pleasure outside of them until the day his parents take a Jewish family into hiding.  
  
The four of them make a ragged bunch – a stooped, prematurely aged mother who hides her ruined face behind a head-scarf, two thin dark-haired girls who Louis can’t tell apart and Harry, who in this life has the dark, lush head of curls Louis loves the most. All their life’s belongings are cobbled together in one battered leather suitcase, which they unpack and repack each morning and evening with the ritual efficiency of the displaced.  
  
Harry’s only pair of trousers have grown too short for his rapidly lengthening limbs and his feet are too big for his only pair of shoes, so he mostly goes barefoot until Louis wordlessly leaves a pair of his father’s old work boots on the cellar stairs one night. Harry’s mostly elbows and knees and long, thin fingers. Despite his poor diet, his cheeks are ruddy, his mouth stained red and the green eyes that peer out from beneath his untidy mop of hair are striking in color and depth. In this life, he’s called Daniel, and his sweet, almost debilitating shyness makes Louis ache all over, in ways he couldn’t anticipate, despite how intimate he is with the workings of Harry’s soul.  
  
Louis isn’t sure that Daniel wants him back until one particularly hot, hellish day in the summer of 1940, a week after Daniel had arrived. Louis had paused in his plowing to mop at his brow with a dusty kerchief from his back pocket. He’d long ago stripped off his shirt and his tan, muscled chest glistens with hard-earned sweat. As he tips his head back to swallow some lukewarm water from his thermos, he spots Daniel’s pale, heart-shaped face in the kitchen window, watery reflection doubled back on the glass, like a ghost. When Daniel sees Louis has spotted him, he quickly shuffles the lace curtain back into place, but not before Louis has seen Daniel’s eyes, burning hot with something unnamable, something quite like desire.  
  
Daniel is meant to be invisible and he’s _mostly_ good at it – ducking around corners at the last second, coming up from the cellar only at night to gather food for his family, but he’s only _mostly_ good because Louis can’t stop noticing him. All of Daniel’s attempts to secret himself away, to make himself smaller, to lessen his burden on Louis’ family, only serve to make Louis want him more.  
  
The furtive glances Daniel sends his way when he thinks Louis isn’t looking, the way he bites down on his bottom lip and chews the knuckles of his left hand when he spies on Louis bathing in the kitchen’s ceramic tub, kindle the desire in the pit of Louis’ belly in that old, centuries-familiar way. It gets so bad he can’t sleep or eat because all he can think of is lowering Daniel to his back in the dirt, of kissing his shoulder blades through the washed-thin fabric of his only shirt, of burying his face in those dark curls until time ceases to exist.  
  
There are secrets in the soft curve where Daniel’s neck meets his shoulder, secrets Louis means to draw out with soft, wet kisses spread out along Daniel’s collarbone until his head rolls back and his eyelashes flutter and he growls low in the back of his throat. That’s the Harry Louis remembers, the one he loves the most.  
  
It’s been so long since they kissed properly, but the memory is so vivid in Louis’ mind he still can feel the ghosting warmth of Harry’s mouth over his, feel the panting, juddering gasps of Harry’s breath against his face as he curls his fingers and toes, his whole body going tight as a spring before release and then afterwards, melting bonelessly into the cradle of Louis’ arms, a soft, pliant thing, as naked and vulnerable as a newborn babe. That’s when Louis loves Harry the most – when he’s completely wrecked, bruised and sore and soft, head too heavy to lift as Louis peppers his face and hair with kisses.  
  
Two weeks after Daniel moves in, on a night Louis’ parents are staying in a neighboring village overnight getting supplies, Louis draws Daniel a bath.  
  
“You were starting to stink,” Louis chuckles to a humiliated Daniel, who immediately hangs his head and draws in on himself until Louis lifts his chin with one finger. Daniel’s relief is palpable when he sees the warmth in Louis’ eyes and realizes Louis isn’t making _fun_ of him; he’s _teasing_ him. Daniel strips down quickly, but Louis takes his wrist before he can step into the bath.  
  
“Let me look at you.”  
  
Daniel lets out a startled breath through his teeth, but nonetheless straightens under Louis’ gaze. He’s been hurt and humiliated, called names and spit on, stripped and poked and prodded all because he was born into the religion he was born into, and despite how kind Louis has been, Daniel’s expecting more of the same. So when Louis looks at Daniel like he’s something beautiful, something rare, maybe even something worth keeping, Daniel blushes from the tips of his ears down to his toes. There’s lust in Louis’ eyes, but also something else Daniel doesn’t understand, considering he’s only known Louis a few weeks. For a minute, he swears Louis is looking at him with something like love.  
  
Daniel worries that Louis will want something more from him, something he can’t give. Because Louis’ family has done so much for Daniel’s family, risked their own lives and livelihoods and he knows he doesn’t have the option of saying no if Louis asks. Of course, when Louis looks at him the way he does, Daniel’s not even sure he _wants_ to say no. But Louis _doesn’t_ ask – just sets about wiping Daniel down with a soft, warm, sudsy cloth and it’s all Daniel can do to keep from groaning at how good it all feels. Louis hands are hard and calloused from farm work and occasionally they slip from the clothe and rasp against Daniel’s soft skin and his toes involuntarily curl.  
  
It’s the first time he’s been touched this way by someone other than his own parents when he was a baby. And it’s the first time he’s bathed in he doesn’t know how long. But mostly, it’s the first time someone has shown him the smallest bit of tenderness and humanity in a long, long while.  
  
When Louis’ fingers move onto Daniel’s hair, massaging in languid, unhurried circles right down to his scalp, Daniel actually _does_ moan. Louis doesn’t mention it and doesn’t stop, but Daniel feels a bit awkward after anyway and is glad when Louis declares him, _“all clean”_. Louis dries him, briskly and efficiently with a rough-textured towel and stokes a small fire in the hearth as he prepares tea for them.  
  
When Daniel’s curls have dried a bit and he has some food in his tummy, Louis sits him in a straight-backed kitchen chair and trims his hair. He then dresses Daniel in one of his own shirts and a pair of his trousers (which are still too short) and makes no comment when Daniel starts to get an erection. When they part for the night at the head of the cellar stairs, Daniel has to lean down to kiss Louis, who’s shorter despite being two years older.  
  
It’s Daniel who asks Louis for permission in the end, murmuring, “May I?” one evening when they’re sitting on the porch after sunset, looking out over the fields and sharing a bottle of warm, flat beer Louis had stolen from the ice box.  
  
“I thought you’d never ask,” Louis grins, his smile erased by the crush of Daniel’s lips against his own.  
  
Daniel falls in love with Louis slowly and tentatively, like he’s navigating a staircase at night, afraid that the next misstep will be the one to send him plunging into the darkness. He lost a younger brother and his father in the ghetto so everything feels a bit impermanent, even and perhaps most especially, love. They hold their love between them, like two penguins keeping their egg warm through a long, bitter winter.  
  
The first time they make love, Daniel cries, not for the pain but because it’s been so long since he’s allowed himself to feel anything, to imagine himself worthy of love, of being cherished. Louis kisses on his skin are like brands – just as visible in his mind as the Star of David he’d been forced to wear in the early days of the war, but with the opposite effect – Louis’ love marks him, claims him, baptizes him into a whole new life of love he didn’t previously think was possible.  
  
Louis spends hours memorizing the creases behind Daniel’s knees, the white scar on his jawline, the baby soft skin behind his ears – first with his eyes and then with his mouth. He loves the deep, husky sound of Daniel’s laughter and the way Daniel clings to him after they’ve made love like Louis is a life raft and the whole world is sinking around him. And in a lot of ways, it is.  
  
Everyone Daniel has known and loved is gone, sent off to a camp or displaced or in hiding or dead. During the long winter of ’42, Daniel's mother and both sisters die, one after the other, of pneumonia, no doubt caused by the damp cold of the cellar. There’s nothing to be done for it. Calling a doctor would have put them all at risk. The ground’s too frozen for a shovel, so they wrap the bodies in white sheets and sink them in the lake, with Daniel murmuring low prayers over them in Hebrew.  
  
Daniel manages to make it through, but he has a wet, lasting cough that will follow him until the day he dies. His fragile health at least allows Louis to insist Daniel begin sleeping upstairs. Though they hardly sleep. They’re so tense in those last few months of the war, convinced the SS will burst through the door at any moment. But as each day passes, the knot in Louis' chest loosens slightly, so by the time the Allied forces arrive, he’s practically dizzy with relief.  
  
By the end of the war, as the cold is breaking, Louis has begun to hope. He whispers promises of America into Daniel’s apple-scented hair, telling of a life he’s half-scared will never come to fruition because times are strange and everything feels a bit fragile then. No one makes plans during the war, least of all Louis, who knows life often has other plans. And it does.  
  
One spring morning, Louis is walking toward Daniel, smiling and happy after an exhausting day of work on the farm when the stray bullet hits him. He staggers once and then crumples, clutching at his chest. The last things he sees are Harry’s green eyes gone round with alarm, then white sky, and then nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst part is the waiting. Sometimes, the waiting is without end. Sometimes, Louis goes a whole lifetime without finding him. He staggers through the streets like a phantom, through crowds of unfamiliar faces and meaningless tasks, and the days pass by in an unending fog. Except, the days aren’t unending. Everything ends. And everything begins again too. The two things Louis can be certain of in all of his lives is that he will always love Harry and that all things - good and bad - will eventually pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [25 Lives](http://s2b2.livejournal.com/142934.html) by tongari.

  
 

  ****

**The Lives In Which I’ve Loved You**

 

_**IV. I remember most fondly those lifetimes when we get to grow up together.** _

The worst part is the waiting. Sometimes, the waiting is without end. Sometimes, Louis goes a whole lifetime without finding him. He staggers through the streets like a phantom, through crowds of unfamiliar faces and meaningless tasks, and the days pass by in an unending fog. Except, the days _aren’t_ unending.  _Everything_ ends. And everything begins again too. The two things Louis can be certain of in all of his lives is that he will always love Harry and that all things - good and bad - will eventually pass.

For most people, knowing this would be a comfort. Knowing there is an end to suffering, knowing that no matter how bad it gets, there will be moments of inconceivable joy waiting just down the road. But for Louis - knowing there’s no hell-fire or golden gates waiting for him at the end, knowing that even the most unbearable pain and strife will fade to barely discernible scars with time – makes it all predictable and tiresome. There’s only so many times Louis can marvel at the Eiffel Tower or stand in awe of the Grand Canyon (if he’s honest, _once_ was plenty - it’s just a giant hole - he doesn’t really understand all the fuss).

After a time, even the most adventurous aspects of life - zip lining through the Amazon and hiking the Alps and swimming with dolphins and going on African safari - start to lose their luster. Thrill-seeking is only truly heart-pounding when it’s a rare occurrence; as soon as sky-diving becomes a mundane activity, Louis doesn’t much see the point in it. When you’ve lived several hundred lives, life and human nature become lamentably predictable and the wonders of the world become slightly less wondrous.

But _then_. _Then_ , Louis meets Harry. Harry is the only person who can still make Louis blush and stammer through his words like a lovesick teenager, the only person who can still make Louis’ knees go weak and his mouth go dry. He’s the only person - the only _thing_ really - that gives Louis’ lives meaning. And while Louis tires of a lot of things (he could do without eating another slice of pepperoni pizza ever again), he _never_ tires of Harry. He never tires of seeking him out, of finding him, of loving him, of exploring whatever form his body is currently in. Loving Harry is the purest form of invention. With Harry, everything is made new again, no matter how many times they’ve done it before.

Harry is the anchor at the end of Louis’ never-ending rope. He’s what keeps Louis weighted to the world, what keeps him grounded.  But that’s not to say there aren’t others...

The first time Louis found solace in the arms of another person, he’d been wracked with guilt for weeks, unable to explain to his lover that he felt like he was cheating on someone he’d yet to meet (in that life). He’s stopped feeling guilt over it since; if Louis has one motto it’s: _It is what it is_. Pleasure is pleasure, and over time, Louis finds it surprisingly easy to have with anyone - man or woman, thin or corpulent, rich or poor, dark-skinned or pale.

And Louis doesn’t love Harry any less for it. Love isn’t like a well - where when you drank your fill, it ran dry - it was constantly replenishing itself. Louis’ love for Harry was bottomless. If anything, being with other people made Louis appreciate what he with Harry all the more. And because there was no guarantee that Harry would return Louis’ affections in the same way or even that they’d meet in a given lifetime, their courting never became predictable and Louis never felt a moment in Harry’s company was a moment wasted.

* * *

When Louis dreams at night, its Harry’s green eyes he’s gazing up into, like two green moons suspended over his bed in the darkness. Harry’s eyes are just as they were the last time he saw them - lying flat on his back - the life bleeding out of him into the soil of a free Germany. Back when he was Louis and Harry was Daniel and they held each other, thin-armed and shaking in Louis’ narrow bed as the bombs dropped over Germany and they spoke in whispers of another life.

The other life came – but not as they expected.  Daniel lived to grow old and Louis is an Italian girl named Lucia now - with smooth skin the color of raw almonds and a sheet of shining black hair to rival the night sky. One day, when Lucia is sixteen years old and reshelving books at the library where she works, she comes upon one Daniel’s books by accident (though is _anything_ an accident when it comes to Daniel?). She pockets the tome and reads it in hungry gulps - between dinner and bedtime that evening, over toast and jam at breakfast the following morning, after school at the beach as the sun sets the next day.

When Lucia reads the words Daniel wrote, her heart flutters in her chest like a captured songbird, wings beating a frantic pulse against the bars of her ribcage. Her fingers tingle with electricity as she turns the pages – reading of her old life with Daniel. Tears fall onto the pages, marking them, as she in turn is marked by his words. She reads the book every night before she falls asleep for the next two years without fail, until she can recite the words by heart and it’s still not nearly enough. Not when she knows he’s out there, that he’s unknowingly waiting for her to come back to him.

Each night, Lucia falls asleep with Daniel’s words on her lips, his green eyes in her mind and a layer of crumpled lira stuffed under her mattress, determined to leave and find him once she’s old enough. But in the meantime, she waits. Lucia’s spent half her life waiting and the longing makes her restless, prone to fits of daydreaming. She’s close enough to her family, but they work long hours and the kids her age find her strange and aloof and subsequently, she spends most of her time alone.

She’s young and flush with love, but in some ways she’s lonelier than she’s ever been. Some nights, she cloes the book halfway through and impatiently pushes aside her cotton panties, dipping her long fingers inside herself, growing wet at the thought of him - of his red, full-lipped mouth pressing searing kisses into her trembling thighs. She thinks of the night she gave him a bath – how young and bashful and beautiful he’d been – and how she’d wanted to kiss her reassurances all over his skin, but had resisted until she knew he was ready, that he wanted her too.

Lucia’s a beautiful girl and the boys in her small seaside community can’t help but take notice. She has a full mouth and a husky voice dripping with sensuality. Her mother - a seamstress - sews her cotton, floral dresses that do nothing to disguise her curves, her full hips and heaving bosom, her womanly shape. She becomes well-known for turning down suitors and eventually develops a reputation as a haughty girl, a girl with delusions of grandeur, who’d rather spend the day with her head in a book than on the arm of a boy.

The summer that Niall comes to her village is the summer before Lucia turns eighteen. Niall has a shock of blonde hair bleached white by days in the sun and tanned, muscled arms and speaks in a thick Irish brogue that sounds like music to her ears. He works at the shipyards and she’s captivated by his sweet, easy-going nature, by the little trinkets he brings her - tart, sweet plums, tumbled beach glass, a single gardenia plucked from someone’s garden - like a cat bringing gifts to his master. She falls for him without meaning to, even as she sets aside money for her train tickets to see Daniel, for the apartment she’ll live in once she gets there.

Niall takes her virginity in a small beach shanty one steamy summer evening after he gets off of work. He smells of salt water and lye soap and wool and he reminds her of home. Not of _her_ home - she’s never thought of any place as home expect Harry - but of a place with a fire in the hearth and porridge on the stove and laundered sheets billowing in the wind in the yard and a couple of ruddy cheeks babies underfoot. A lump grows in her throat and tears prick at her eyes even as warm pleasure unfolds in her belly. It feels like Daniel’s there with her somehow, like his words are penned in invisible, flammable ink on the surface of her skin, waiting for his fingers to set them alight. She can remember Daniel’s doleful eyes so clearly, the crush of his dark curls against her cheek, the little divots at the base of his spine that her thumbs fit so perfectly into.

Niall pushes into her in time with the crashing waves on the shore, moving slowly and rhythmically, his face flushed, skin slick with sweat. He looks beautiful this way – red-cheeked and vulnerable and alive – and she feels sorry for not loving him. Niall rubs a calloused thumb over her dark, pert nipple where it’s exposed by the undone buttons of her thin cotton dress and leans down to suck at a soft spot behind her ear. Lucia wraps her legs more tightly around his back, clinging to him like an octopus trying to bring a ship down to the depths with it.

When they make love, it feels like they’re the only ones left on the Earth. Not in the way that it feels with Harry – the way everything else but him grows fuzzy and indistinct - but in a way that’s apocalyptic. Their coupling is rife with melancholy and inexpressible longing - Niall dreaming of the green shores of Ireland and his mammy’s cooking and a girl with red hair and Lucia thinking only, _always_ , of Daniel.

She cries afterwards and Niall holds her and kisses her face and hair, but doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t ask _why_ , for which she’s grateful. They see each other a few times after - but it’s never like it was - and they don’t have sex again. One night, they’re eating gelato on the dock as the sun is setting, bare tanned legs dangling down into the water as they watch ships leave the harbor. It’s a week before Lucia’s due to leave and the suitcase under her bed is already packed, though she hasn’t told Niall. She hasn’t told _anyone_.

They’d been laughing a few moments before, Lucia leaning in to lick a stray dribble of strawberry gelato from the crease of Niall’s smiling mouth. Niall is always smiling and laughing and Lucia loves him for how simple he makes it look. But today, he’s quietly brooding, watching the sun sink behind the cliffs with increasing intensity. “What’s his name?” he asks softly, so softly that at first she isn’t sure she’s heard him correctly, that she hasn’t imagined it.

“Does it matter?” she asks, examining his profile – the faint constellation of freckles across his nose, the faded white scar on his dimpled chin.

His face is wearing that faraway look it gets sometimes, that look of acute longing that originally drew her to him. It’s a look she can only describe as homesick. Lucia has felt like a refuge all her life, bouncing from one country to another, slipping into different skins, different clothes, different languages with ease, but none of them fitting her so well as Harry.

Niall shrugs, one-shouldered. “Mine’s Molly,” he offers, unconsciously touching the gold medallion that rests in the divot at the base of his throat and rises and falls with his breath.

“Daniel,” she whispers his name like a secret, pressing the word into Niall’s wrist with her lips. His eyes when they flick up to look at her are a pure, painful turquoise – ocean-coloured eyes that change with his mood.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Lucia nods slowly. “How did you know?”

“Because you were like a ghost in my arms,” he says. “You felt like you were already gone.”

Lucia smiles fondly, reaching for Niall’s hand where it lays between them. “I was never really here to begin with.”

* * *

The first time she meets Daniel - for the _second_ time - Lucia’s riding her bike through Covent Garden when she gets clipped by a cab.

Daniel’s a fairly well known novelist by then. He won a Pulitzer for his writing in 1958, though he’s been somewhat of a recluse since, refusing interviews and press appearances. Lucia was able to glean from his publishing house that he was living in London, but she’s been in England two weeks now and has yet to uncover anything but dead ends.

The driver gets out of his cab and Lucia assures him in broken English that she’s okay, hopping toward the curb with the remains of her mangled bike. She’s okay - badly shaken, with a scraped and bloody knee - but gloriously alive. She lets out an abrupt burst of startled laughter as the shock wears off. It would be awful to wait so long and come so far only to be killed within sight of her soulmate. Which is exactly who’s sitting at a sidewalk table at a cafe on the street, sipping his coffee and jotting something down in a leather bound journal when Lucia is struck.

“Are you okay?” comes a concerned voice in accented English from somewhere above her.  When Lucia looks up, it’s Daniel rushing toward her, alarm on his face, and for a moment it’s like she’s back in Germany all over again, struck down by a stray bullet from the Allied forces in the first weeks after the war. She had a smile on her face when she died, because she knew something Daniel didn’t, she knew it wouldn’t be the last time, that there would _never_ be a last time, not for them, for _him_.

“Ye-yes,” she stammers, bubbling champagne excitement quickly replacing the coursing fright in her veins.

“Please, come sit.” Daniel gestures, putting his arm around her to help her to the spare seat at his table. Her skin heats up where he touches it, bare arms erupting into goose-bumps.

Daniel tips some water from the pitcher on the table into a cloth napkin and presses it to her knee, looking up at her face for the first time. For a moment, she thinks there’s a flicker of recognition in his expression, but then his face slides back into a composed mask of ignorance. Her face flushes nonetheless. After all this time, his gaze is almost too much to bear.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nods, face downcast, because it’s too much at once. Too much to see his beloved face - older now – feathered creases at the corners of his eyes and lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there before, but still so, _so_ handsome. He’s only thirty-six to her eighteen, but he’s had a hard life and his eyes are sad.  She's sorry she had to leave him, but as a rule she never regrets.

“You’re a writer.” It’s meant to be a question, but it comes out as a statement. Daniel’s words have provided Lucia with company on many long, lonely winter nights.  In his absence, she’s kissed the pages of his book, for want of something better. But she can’t say all that to him. She can’t let him know how her heart leaps in his presence, how just a look from him reduces her to rubble, to ruins.

Daniel looks at her, puzzled, and she quickly gestures to his hands, where ink is smeared along the sides of his long fingers. “Your hands.”

“Oh,” he laughs, embarrassed, and tries to hide them from her sight – her shy Daniel all over.

She captures his large hand in her smaller one. “Don’t.” Now it’s his turn to blush.

“I’m sorry, but have we met before?”

She laughs as she releases his hand. “I’ve only just moved to London.”

* * *

As it turns out, Daniel is a frequent customer of the café Lucia works at. He laughs, pleasantly surprised, when he first sees her there, and politely inquires after the state of her knee as she attempts to disguise her blush behind the pastry case. After that, it becomes a regular thing.

Each day, as she works, she catches glimpses of him over the top of the Espresso machine - writing in his journal at the little table by the window, sometimes pausing to thoughtfully chew the end of his pen or gaze out at some commotion on the street.  Sometimes, when Daniel thinks Lucia's not looking, he looks at her with a curious expression – like he’s trying to figure out why she’s so familiar to him. 

Daniel was like a stone in the middle of a river - life kept moving around him, but he was stuck in his routines, in his memories of a boy with bright blue eyes.  He lived his life only through observing others, through making notes.

Each day, Lucia brings Daniel a small gift, which she carries to him on his saucer along with his tea – an origami bird she made from a scrap of newspaper, a blueberry scone, a striking blue feather she found on her walk to work.

Each day, after her shift, Lucia strips off her work apron and pulls her hair out of its bun and they sit for hours, speaking in whispers, huddled with their faces close. At the beginning of these conversations, Daniel always asks if she hasn’t got some better place to be than hanging out with an old man like him, but she always laughs off his concerns.  The truth is, she's exactly where she _needs_ to be.

Each night, when the café closes, they move to a restaurant or just wander the streets, sharing a bottle of wine between them. When Daniel’s full lips are stained red with wine and her inhibitions are sufficiently loosened, Lucia has to clench her hands into fists to keep from reaching for him, from sneaking a taste of his mouth. She speaks of her life in Italy – of the sights and smells and sounds - and eventually, he tells her of his life in Germany and the first time he mentions Louis, she cries.

When Lucia finds out she’s pregnant she feels like the whole world is coming down around her. The buoyant, floating on air sensation she’s had since coming to London, since finding Daniel again, pops like a balloon, gravity dragging her back down to Earth. Lucia can barely afford the payments on the tiny flat she shares with four flatmates; how is she supposed to afford a child? And what’s more, she’s only begun to reconnect with Daniel; what if she’s ruined her chance?

Daniel notices her dark mood the next morning, how quiet and withdrawn she is, how she doesn’t even bother to leave him a present with his morning tea. He watches her worriedly from his corner of the café throughout her shift, barely lifting his pen. “Is everything okay?” he asks when her shift is over.

“Just – got some news yesterday,” she says, biting her lip and trying not to cry.

Daniel pauses, considering. “I hope…I hope this isn’t too forward of me, but I’ve been invited to speak at a symposium in France. Would you like to accompany me for the weekend? Might be nice to get away.” She looks up at him, shocked. Despite the increasing amount of time they spend together, he’s never asked anything like this.

He takes her reticence for reluctance. “It’s okay…silly idea, really. I’m sorry if I offended-”

Lucia grins, throwing her arms around him before she can second-guess herself. His body is shockingly warm and solid against hers and she never wants to let him go. “I’d love to.”

* * *

They make love for the first time that weekend, shyly undressing one another in the half-light of evening, after dining on Oysters and champagne on the hotel balcony. Daniel’s as beautiful as she remembers – even _more_ so – and Lucia’s heart swells with love for him. She explores his new scars and wrinkles with interest and revisits all her favorite places - pressing kisses behind his ears and to the backs of his knees.  They barely leave their bed all weekend – ordering room-service between marathon love-making sessions, feeding each other strawberries pressed in sugar. Daniel’s not as quick to recover as he once was, but Lucia doesn’t mind. It gives her more time to gaze at him as he sleeps, to touch his body slowly and unhurriedly without the threat of the war breathing down their necks.

They make love so many times, Daniel misses the symposium he came to France for in the first place. They stay up late their last evening, drinking wine and basking in each other’s post-sex glow. “I feel like I dreamed you up,” Daniel says softly, running his fingers through her long dark hair.

“If this is a dream, then I’m dreaming it too,” she smiles, delighting at the way his face lights up.

“It’s strange – I haven’t felt this alive since the war…”

“Since Louis?” she asks carefully. Daniel searches her face for some sign she’s jealous or disappointed, but she’s smiling.

“Yeah. Since Louis. I feel crazy for saying so – you’re so young and I’m so well, _not_ _young_ – What will people think?”

“Hush,” she kisses his mouth. “Who cares what people think? Who cares what _anyone_ thinks?”

* * *

They’re standing on the ferry on the way home, watching the waves recede in the wake of the boat when she tells him. The weekend away was a dream, but each mile they get closer to England, the more reality settles in. “I’m pregnant,” she tells him, keeping her face forward, so she doesn't have to see his reaction.

“So quickly?” he laughs, no doubt startled by her confession.

“No – before I left Italy – I should have told you before – but he’s not – he didn’t – I’m not with him – it was just once and I - ” _I love you_.  _I've always loved you._

Daniel nods thoughtfully, putting his hand over hers where it rests on the rail. “And _me_? Are you with me?” His voice is a little breathless, a little hopeful, a little scared.  He wonders who this girl is - who stumbled into his life by accident - and unknowingly brought him back to life.  He wonders if it's too good to be true - too soon to start hoping - if she'll evaporate in his arms like Louis, like his dreams of one day moving to America.

Lucia frowns, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I’d like to be. But how could you – I’m pregnant with another man’s baby –”

Daniel smiles, cupping her face in his hands. “Lucia, if there’s one thing I learned during the war, it’s that life is short and every moment is precious. Let’s just enjoy our time together and not worry about it.”

“Not _worry_? I’m going to have a baby in six months.”

“And you should be happy. New life is a precious gift. And the baby doesn’t change things between us –”

She tries to believe him and when he kisses her, she nearly does.

* * *

Things with Daniel are wonderful, but as Lucia's belly grows and the money in her account dwindles, she starts to worry more and more. She can only stay on her feet working so much longer, but she can’t afford to quit.  And she's too young to raise a child herself - out here on her own, without any help.  It’s January when Daniel finally asks Lucia to move in with him and the baby is born the very next month – a beautiful baby girl with Lucia’s dark hair and Niall’s ocean eyes. They call her Leah, after Daniel’s mother.

Leah sleeps between them in bed for the first three months of her life for lack of a crib, until Lucia comes home from work one day and Daniel has cleared out his office and painted the spare room yellow and filled it with furniture and toys. In the months that follow, Daniel is the happiest she’s ever seen him – waking up early to give the baby her bottle – humming as he bounces her, treading grooves into the wooden floor from traversing it so many times.

In the years to come, they have three more children (all girls), and Daniel doesn’t treat the first child any differently than any of his other daughters. He doesn’t write any more novels, but he does write several best-selling children’s books and they don’t want for money. And perhaps – most importantly – they are happy.

 

_**V. when you share your secrets and sorrows and hiding places with me.** _

Here is the part Louis both loves and hates - being new again - being a fat, helpless baby lying on his back in a bassinet. He reaches up, fascinated by his wiggling toes, by the swinging mobile above him, by the constellation of glowing star stickers on his ceiling. He reaches and reaches, even when he doesn’t know what he’s reaching for. He just knows there’s _something_ , something _important_ , but unnamed or as of yet, unrealized.

Louis cries. He cries all the time. He cries when he’s hungry. He cries when he’s thirsty. He cries when he’s drenched in wetness and filth. He cries when his clothes are too itchy or a tag rubs up against his sensitive skin. He cries when he manages to roll over halfway and gets stuck like that. He cries when his dummy falls out of his mouth and he can’t get it back in. He cries when he knocks his stuffed elephant out of the crib and he can’t reach her. Sometimes, he just cries because he feels a sense of wrongness, a sense that something is missing or lost.

The woman usually makes him feel a bit better. She smells of milk and laundry powder and her body is warm and solid against his own. She wraps him up in his blanket so tightly he can’t move a finger and that makes him feel better, _safer_ somehow. She sings him songs or sometimes just hums so he can feel the vibrations in her chest along the whole length of his body. She feeds him or changes his soggy nappy. She walks him up and down the room, patting his back and placing comforting little kisses to his peach-fuzzed head. And it’s not that Louis _forgets_ in those moments, forgets that a bit of him is missing and it’s imperative to get it back, but sometimes, he’s so very cranky and tired, he allows himself the momentary pleasure of tuning it all out.

Often times, Louis cries not because he actually needs something, but because there’s a constant, persistent ache inside of him, a pull on his heart like the moon tugging at the tide. He just doesn’t have the words to say it yet. He doesn’t have the words to say _anything_. He speaks sixty-five languages, but when he’s a baby all he wants to do is put everything into his mouth and sleep the day away. It doesn’t matter how many times he reincarnates, it’s always the same, lying there completely at someone else's mercy and yearning to grow old enough to find his missing half again.

As Louis gains awareness of himself and the world around him - as he learns to recognize his reflection in the mirror tacked to the bars of his playpen, as he learns that those bewitching things he tries to put into his mouth are toes and that the toes are attached to a leg and that the leg is _his_ \- he begins to better understand the ache inside him, to become intimate with it. He knows, that like his toes, the ache is his own, not his mum’s or dad’s or anyone else’s and it’s his job to make it better.

He begins to put names to things - block, book, shoe, spoon - and to people - to the woman (who he calls mummy), to the gray cat (Rudy) that sometimes slinks into their garden through a hole in the neighbor’s fence, to the man with the scratchy face who throws him up in the air and catches him again (daddy) and at last he’s able to put a name to that longing he feels and that longing’s name is Harry.

As a child, Harry is Louis’ imaginary playmate until he’s real. Louis talks to him, serves him saucers of tea, shares bites of his biscuit. His mum sets a place at the table for Harry and seatbelts him into the car next to Louis and sometimes she talks to him too, because she thinks Louis is playing a game. But then one day, his daddy tells him he’s too old for an imaginary friend.  From then on, Louis can only talk to Harry in private – before he falls to bed at night, in the little crawlspace under his bed, high up in boughs of his tree-house.

When a little boy around Louis’ age moves into the flat next-door, Louis’ mum is only too delighted for Louis to have a real friend and invites the boy and his mum round for tea. The first time Louis sees Harry in this life, the boy is peering out from behind his mother’s legs, big green eyes round as saucers.

“Do you like hide and seek?” Louis asks cheerfully.

Harry shyly mumbles, “yes” around the thumb in his mouth.

“Stop sucking your thumb,” the boy’s mum scolds him, batting at his hand. The boy takes it out and says yes a second time, more clearly.

Louis holds out his hand. “Come on. Let’s play.” Harry’s palm is slightly sticky, his thumb wet with saliva when it tucks into his own. His breath smells like milk-soggy biscuits and mashed up banana.  “’M Michael. What’s your name?”

“Robin,” the boy beams and Michael/Louis sticks his tongue into Robin’s ear because it seems like a good idea when you’re six years old.

Robin giggles as Michael’s mum looks on, horrified. “Michael, you mustn’t put your tongue in other people’s ears.”

“It’s okay.  I don’t mind,” Robin shrugs before they disappear around the corner, hands swinging.

* * *

It doesn’t take Michael long to find out that Robin’s family is different than his own.  For one thing, Robin’s mummy drinks a lot of the bad-smelling stuff.  Because of this, Robin has to take care of her, instead of her taking care of him.  Robin is only four years old, but he already knows to drag his little stool over to the liquor cabinet and pull down the heavy bottle with the red label and red twisty top.  He already knows to count to ten as he pours it and how many ice-cubes to put and how much seltzer.  Sometimes, he spills it and his mummy gives him a hard swat on the rump, so he tries really hard not to spill it. 

Robin knows where to find his mummy’s cigarettes and how to light them for her.  Robin knows to pull the shades shut in the living room in the afternoon when the sun gets too bright for his mummy and where to find her pills and a cold compress for her head when she gets sick.  Robin knows to keep the telly low when his mummy is sleeping and what to tell the post-man or other adults if they stop by or call the house.  Robin knows how to make himself beans on toast and cheese and pickle sandwiches and crackers with peanut butter and jelly.  He used to make macaroni and cheese too, but then he burned himself on the hot water and so he doesn’t like to use the stove anymore.  Michael kisses the faded burn on Robin’s arm and tells him he can have macaroni and cheese at his house anytime he wants.

Besides Robin’s mummy, there is sometimes another man, but the man is not Robin’s father and he doesn’t buy Robin toys or give him hugs like Michael’s dad does.  Michael doesn’t like that man.  When the man is there, Robin doesn’t come round like he usually does.

Michael likes when Robin comes round.  Michael’s mum makes them both a snack and they play Hide and Seek upstairs.  Robin is the best at finding hiding spots and he stays very quiet once he’s hidden.  Once, it took Michael a whole hour to find him.

One afternoon, when it’s raining and Michael is bored, he goes over to Robin’s house without asking.  He knows he shouldn’t because the man’s car is in the driveway, but the front door is open, so Michael lets himself in.  He tiptoes past where Robin’s mummy is asleep on the couch, an arm flung over her face and a half empty bottle on the floor beside her.

Robin’s room is messy which is funny because he is usually very neat.  His dresser is tipped over on one side and there are clothes spilling out on the carpet.  “Robin?” Michael whispers.  He suddenly feels very bad in his stomach and like he should go home, but then he hears a broken whimper that halts him in his tracks.

“Robin?” he calls again, but it’s quiet this time and Michael realizes Robin must be hiding.  He only checks about four places before he pulls back the lid of the toy chest at the foot of Robin’s bed.  Robin is curled up inside, surrounded by the few stuffed animals he has – mostly from Michael’s own mummy.  His face is puffy and swollen from crying and the bib of his shirt is speckled with blood and one cheek is all brown and blue.

Michael doesn’t know what else to do, so he crawls inside and closes the lid.  In the dark, cramped space of the toy chest, his arms slide around Robin from behind, holding his friend close as he cries ragged sobs into the fur of his teddy bear (a hand-me-down from Michael).

“I’m going to take you away from here,” Michael says into Robin’s dark curls.  “I promise.  One day, I’m going to take you away.”

 

_**VI. I love how you play along with my bad ideas.** _

Michael is fifteen now and he hasn’t forgotten his promise to Robin.  He never says anything about that day or any of the other days that follow, but he quietly puts a plan into action.  Each month, he dutifully puts some of his allowance aside.  He starts mowing lawns and babysitting as soon as he’s old enough and the little pile grows.  He rides the train to neighboring cities and towns and finds some of his old hiding spots – from past lives – places where he’s buried coffee cans of rolled-up cash and cigar boxes of coins.  His mum helps him to open a bank account and he goes every Friday to deposit what he’s earned/scrounged up that week. 

In the meantime, Robin spends more and more time at Michael’s house, eating dinner there and sleeping over more often than not.  In Michael’s narrow twin bed, their bodies press together like two palms closed in prayer.  When Robin wakes up whimpering from bad dreams, Michael is there to kiss his temple, to run his thumb over the burn scar on Robin’s arm (which he’s grown more self-conscious about as he’s gotten older so Michael takes every opportunity to tell him it’s beautiful). 

Michael’s mum and dad really like Robin and Michael tries not to be too jealous when he sees them hug Robin or buy him clothes or cook him his favorite meal.  And mostly he’s not – Robin has changed completely since he first moved in next door – readily accepting affection from Michael’s family and no longer flinching when a hand is held out to him.  He seems closer to the boy he might have been if he’d had a normal, loving family, closer to the boy Michael has always known and loved.

Sometimes, when Robin’s stepdad is there, Robin has to stay at home for days at a time and Michael misses him and worries for him so much he can’t sleep or eat.  Their windows are next to each other’s, so they develop a pulley system using a clothesline and a basket so they can pass messages to each other.  They send notes to pass the time or favorite books to read and when there’s no food in Robin’s house, Michael wraps up some meat-pies in a tea-towel and sends them over.

If they each sit on the ledge of their own windowsill and Michael leans out just a bit, he can see one of Robin’s legs dangling down against the brick wall and a sliver of bare shoulder peering out from behind the window frame.  They’re close enough to whisper and they do, on hot summer nights when they can’t get to sleep without hearing each other’s voices.  Sometimes, it feels like something hasn’t happened at all until Michael tells it to Robin, like his experiences aren’t real or whole or worthwhile unless he shares them with his best friend.  Sometimes, it feels like Michael can’t fully love a song or appreciate a sunset unless Robin’s there with him.  Robin makes everything more sweet and lovely and perfect just by being there.

Robin’s getting older now and he’s more and more beautiful with each passing day.  He looks just like his mom – or how she _would_ have looked if her face weren’t ravaged by alcohol – and it causes problems between Robin and his stepdad.  Robin’s stepdad thinks he’s too soft, too pretty for a boy.  The prettier Robin’s face gets, the stronger his stepdad’s desire to bruise it becomes.  He’s not around often, but when he is, Robin is quiet and flinching and withdrawn.  He’s a little boy again, retreating into his toy chest, into the dark, cramped spaces of his own mind.

It pains Michael when Robin shuts him out – it pains him to be on the outside looking in – to be just another person Robin keeps at arm’s length.  Michael’s known Robin in every way there is to know someone – he’s borne children with him and made love to him and kissed tears from his cheeks and held him in his arms as he slipped from the world – but in this life, they’ve never even kissed.  Michael’s never even told him what he’s always known to be true - that he _loves_ him, that he’s spent lifetimes chasing him around the world and that just one glance makes from Robin makes it all worthwhile, that Michael would die tomorrow if it meant Robin would be safe.

Sometimes, Robin’s stepdad’s eyes linger on Robin a little too long – face tight with a mixture of revulsion and arousal.  The first time Michael overhears Robin’s stepdad calling him a pansy, his blood boils.  Michael wants to punch those words right out of the man’s mouth, along with his teeth.  He doesn’t care that he’s bigger or older.  He doesn’t care if he loses some teeth himself.

“I’ll kill him,” Michael confides to Robin from their windowsill perches later that evening, after the sun has set and the night has grown cool.  He can see bruises and scars and scabbed mosquito bites on Robin’s long summer-browned leg where it dangles down and he wants to press kisses to Robin’s wounds, his bony knees and slim ankles.  “I’ll kill him and I won’t even care.”

“I don’t need you to fight all my fights,” Robin says softly, introspectively.

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“I know you _mean_ well – It just – it is what it is,” Robin sighs, scratching at a bite on his leg until he draws blood.  The bead of blood looks black in the moonlight.  “Getting angry about it won’t change anything.  Plus…”

“Plus?”

“He’s _right_.  About…I _am_.  I do like…boys more than girls.”  Michael nearly falls out of the window in shock.  It’s the first time Robin’s said anything – _hinted_ at anything – of that nature and Michael had resigned himself to another lifetime of unrequited love.  It was enough to be Robin’s savior, his champion.  But that it was possible – to be his love too – knocks the wind out of Michael.

“Michael.  Please say something.”

“I don’t know _what_ to say- Is there someone – is there a boy you feel that way for?”

“Just forget it. I’m going to bed.”  The window slams shut, severing the tenuous strand of Michael’s hope.  He sits there for a long time, afraid to move and disturb the spell, afraid that as soon as he does move, the truth will seep into his skin and never make its way out again.  He’s lying in bed when he hears the rusty creak of something being slid along the clothes-line and when he glances up, the basket has stopped outside his window.

Michael leaps from his bed, throwing open the window like it's snowing on Christmas morning.  But just as he's reaching for it, the note in the basket is torn away by the wind.  Michael races down the stairs and out into the street, without even bothering to put on shoes.  The sidewalk is wet from the rain and the note finally comes to rest in a puddle.  When Michael glances up, he can see Robin watching him from his window, the light from his bedroom picking out his edges in a halo of gold light.  He thinks maybe he's never looked so beautiful.

Michael grins and gives him a wave as he unpeels the note.  The ink is already running down the page when Michael separates it, but he can just make out the words Robin wrote. 

_**VII. before you grow up and realize they’re bad ideas.** _

_It’s you._


End file.
